Who Invent The Electric Washing Machine?

Who Did Invent the Electric Washing Machine?                            

The Thor electric washer was produced by the Hurley Machine Company ca. 1907. If Fisher’s engineering notes were available they might show he had  involved an electric motor on his machine as early as 1905. However, no such notes are known to exist. The Nineteen Hundred Company began production of  an electric washing machine ca. 1906. If Winans’ design notes were available they  might also show that he was putting an electric motor on a washer by 1905 or before.  Discussed above, Woodrow may have  claimed to be the inventor  of the electric washer in his patent application dated  13 May 1908. (Although, it is not clear that his patent makes such a claim.)  But by that time  washing machines with electric motors were already in production and advertisements to sell them  were issued by 1906-1907. An interference practice, if conducted, would surely have resulted in the denial of any claim  that Woodrow would have made relative to the  invention of the electric washing machine. It is estimated that there were over 1000  companies producing washing machines during the early 1900s. Most of these companies were  very small but almost all would have had the wherewithal to manufacture at least one  electric  washer. One-quarter horsepower electric motors (the size used most often  for washing machines) and electrical distribution networks were beginning to be in use by the 1890s. In his 1894 book, Sir David Salomons illustrated  the electric butter churn of Figure  in addition to an electric mangle and other electric home appliances.

The churn of Figure  is a “close cousin” to a rotating drum washer and during the 1800s there were several patents for devices which could be used either as a butter churn or a washing machine.  Surely in the same era that the electric butter churn came into being, so did the electric washing machine. Figure 9.  Electric  Butter Churn.   1894 As Cowan relates, by 1900 small electric motors were sold with the intention that householders would connect them  to hand cranked washing machines.  Her excellent writing relates the consequences of, and how, technology was integrated into the domestic environment, and she makes little or no use of  patent information. Cowan, in another book states, “If  there were no such thing as a patent, we would not know very much about inventors.” must interpret patent information correctly or  we still won’t know much about inventors. Unless, and until, further  evidence is presented the inventor  of  the electric washing machine certainly must be one of the unnamed householders mentioned in her book.